Law & Disorder —

“Godfather of Spam” goes to prison for four years

One of the biggest spammers on the 'Net will spend the next four years inside …

Alan Ralsky, the so-called "Godfather of spam" was yesterday sentenced by a federal judge in Detroit to spend the next 51 months of his life in prison for wire fraud, mail fraud, and violations of the CAN-SPAM act.

Not content simply to move boxes of pills or to sign people up for new mortgages, Ralsky's operation instead pulled in millions of dollars through "pump and dump" schemes of thinly traded stocks in companies you've never heard of. Millions of e-mails would announce some hot new "Internet IPO!!!!!" just about to drop, and—amazingly—some people would want in on the action. Since the stocks in question were low-volume "pink sheets" stocks, even low levels of activity could boost the stock price, at which point the owners would sell and forward tens of thousands of dollars from Hong Kong to the Standard Federal Bank in Troy, Michigan.

This might not sound like a good way to get rich, but the government's court documents showed just how lucrative the practice could be. Consider the list of following payments that arrived from Hong Kong in just one month, July 2005:

July 5: $180,826.61

July 11: $211,595.76

July 14: $13,532

July 22: $780,295.98

July 26: $65,590.71

July 27: $424,963.73

July 27: $23,702

A scheme like this required a certain amount of sophistication, and Ralsky appears to have run it like a real business. He was the chief executive, and his son-in-law, Scott Bradley, was the chief financial officer. John Bown, CEO of network administration company GDC Layer One, was the "chief technology officer and network systems manager" for the spammers. William Neil served as the chief operating officer and registered many of the hundreds of bogus domain names used by the group.

The conspiracy was global. Although Ralsky and Bradley both lived in West Bloomfield, Michigan, members of their team operated from New York, Brazil, California, Hong Kong, and Dayton, Ohio, and included coders, a stockbroker, a Chinese CEO, and network admins.

Ralsky has been at his tricks for years, and eventually acquired a reputation as one of the world's top spammers. Court documents show that when the spammers recruited someone who claimed he could get 20 million e-mails a day into AOL and Hotmail, the man was awestruck to find out that he was joining Ralsky's operation. "King of spam wants to rent me," he wrote in an instant message. "Cool." (The man eventually made several hundred thousand dollars from his work for Ralsky.)

The Spamhaus description of Ralsky says that "he has grown from a small time operator, under the 'Additional Benefits' moniker, to one of the bigger spam houses on the Internet with a gang of fellow morally challenged types working with him to pump out every type of sleazy deal and scam offer into millions of internet users' mailboxes."

Ralsky wasn't always careful. He would recruit coders from sites like "special ham" (spam) using the "amr777" handle, and his team tried to cloak its e-mail discussions about proxies by using the fairly transparent replacement "p's," "peas," "proximate," and "p s."

Ralsky and company earned more than $2.6 million between May 1 and December 1, 2005 alone, but the feds were closing in. A three-year investigation by the FBI, the US Postal Inspection Service, and the Internal Revenue Service (with a little help from the SEC) untangled the conspiracy. In 2007, the government moved to indict the entire conspiracy.

Yesterday, the lead defendants were finally sentenced after pleading guilty in June 2009. Ralsky and his son-in-law got 51 months and 40 months in jail, respectively, and had to forfeit the cash associated with the spamming scheme. They will be on probation after their release. How Wai John Hui, the Chinese/Canadian CEO who helped arrange the stocks for use in the scheme, also got 51 months. John Bown got 32 months for setting up a botnet used to send the e-mails. A handful of others will be sentenced today.

Strictly speaking, if it's legal it isn't murder. It is still homocide, but it is not murder.And I'm all for punishing these guys severly; the net harm to people from crap like this is substantial. Sure, they're dumb people, but that doesn't make it OK to defraud them.

That's why I think criminals need to be fucking shot through the face.

...Because, you know, then it doesn't pay.

I'm a big fan of the French Revolution too, but its not like they get to keep their illegal earnings. I suppose its fine, they got to live the high life for 4 years and now they get to spend the next four in club fed. Hopefully its lifetime probation - and whoever is supervising them is smart enough to catch on to any new tricks he comes up with and send him back to prison.

That's why I think criminals need to be fucking shot through the face.

...Because, you know, then it doesn't pay.

I'm a big fan of the French Revolution too, but its not like they get to keep their illegal earnings. I suppose its fine, they got to live the high life for 4 years and now they get to spend the next four in club fed. Hopefully its lifetime probation - and whoever is supervising them is smart enough to catch on to any new tricks he comes up with and send him back to prison.

They should also be denied access to computers, the internet and any other network able device...for life...

These are white collar crimes, who/what did they hurt that could not recover?

One could easily argue that financial injuries can be a lot harder to recover from than physical injuries. If someone breaks my arm with a baseball bat, I'll be back to normal within a few months. If someone bilks me out of $50,000 that I'll never see again, it might take me decades to recover financially.

There are two types of deterrence, general and specific. Capital punishment might or might not be an effective general deterrent but it is 100% effective as a specific deterrent. Dead men don't re-offend.

That said, CP is a little harsh here. But, I think the punishment is a little light considering bot-nets were used. They violated the security and data integrity of potentially hundreds of thousands of people. I'm thinking one "hacking" (unauthorized access) charge per bot node is not unreasonable, to be served consecutively of course.

Originally posted by SgtCupCake:I must be the only one who thinks that you shouldnt punish non-violence with violence....These are white collar crimes, who/what did they hurt that could not recover?

For me it's that the punishment of imprisonment for screwing so many victims never seems adequate. Vast numbers of people were affected ranging from minor annoyance to possibly financial ruin. So all he's forced to do is to not leave a particular building, and get 3 square meals a day? No wonder he was such a recidivist, it was very much worth it to keep repeating and refining his criminal activities and screwing over all of us. So, many people figure if the slap-on-the-wrist penalties won't stop him, maybe a chainsaw to the nutsack instead? It just seems that scum like this are rarely really stopped by mere imprisonment.

If he's allowed within 100 feet of any computer at any time for the rest of his life, the justice system has failed us all.

Ralsky wasn't always careful. He would recruit coders from sites like "special ham" (spam) using the "amr777" handle, and his team tried to cloak its e-mail discussions about proxies by using the fairly transparent replacement "p's," "peas," "proximate," and "p s."

Tsk. Tsk. They shouldn't have been sending e-mails in the first place. Too easy to detect and track.

Originally posted by SgtCupCake:I must be the only one who thinks that you shouldnt punish non-violence with violence....These are white collar crimes, who/what did they hurt that could not recover?

For me it's that the punishment of imprisonment for screwing so many victims never seems adequate. Vast numbers of people were affected ranging from minor annoyance to possibly financial ruin. So all he's forced to do is to not leave a particular building, and get 3 square meals a day? No wonder he was such a recidivist, it was very much worth it to keep repeating and refining his criminal activities and screwing over all of us. So, many people figure if the slap-on-the-wrist penalties won't stop him, maybe a chainsaw to the nutsack instead? It just seems that scum like this are rarely really stopped by mere imprisonment.

If he's allowed within 100 feet of any computer at any time for the rest of his life, the justice system has failed us all.

We already know there isn't enough room in prison for the people who really belong there. I don't think more prison time is going to help anything. It just creates hardened career criminals out of small-time crooks, and pushes the ones we should truly be afraid of back on the street.

My belief is that non-violent offenders should have to repay their victims full restitution plus penalties, and they can sit in prison until they do. I'm sure the money these guys forfeited will not go back to the victims, but into the federal coffers to be sent to China.

People that conduct large scale fiscal fraud do more harm to their victims than a basic assault does. Think of it this way; would you rather have a few teeth knocked out and your eyes blacked, or have your bank accounts drained, ruining your credit and finances and leaving you unable to pay your bills? Spread that over large groups of victims and the total harm is immense.

He's FINALLY going to jail??! Hasn't he been doing this shit since.. the '90s? ABOUT FUCKING TIME!

++ to capital punishment as a deterrent for this type of crime. It may (debatably) not be a deterrent in general, but the criminals here are more intelligent than your average gang-banging gun-toting lowlife scum who don't have enough brain cells to consider the consequences of their actions. It's risk vs. reward here - and unless Ralsky and associated vermin have a death wish.. I think capital punishment ought to be a pretty good deterrent..

Originally posted by TitusPullo:>Cause we all know murder is a serious deterrent to crime.

There are two types of deterrence, general and specific. Capital punishment might or might not be an effective general deterrent but it is 100% effective as a specific deterrent. Dead men don't re-offend.

Opposite side of the coin is that we don't know how many people are deterred because they don't commit the crimes. Most of the time the argument against deterrence is that "everybody" isn't deterred, which is pretty lame, imo.

Originally posted by TitusPullo:>Cause we all know murder is a serious deterrent to crime.

There are two types of deterrence, general and specific. Capital punishment might or might not be an effective general deterrent but it is 100% effective as a specific deterrent. Dead men don't re-offend.

Opposite side of the coin is that we don't know how many people are deterred because they don't commit the crimes. Most of the time the argument against deterrence is that "everybody" isn't deterred, which is pretty lame, imo.

The problem with capital punishment is that it flat out does not work. Much of the world uses it for crimes like this, China just executed the executives in charge of the company that shipped that tainted milk for instance. Guess what? We are still recieving tons of faulty and dangerous products from China.

I fully agree with capital punishment for crimes such as murder. But extending it to white collar crimes is ineffective and ridiculous, not to mention costly since capital cases are by far the most expensive.

Originally posted by reflex-croft:The problem with capital punishment is that it flat out does not work. Much of the world uses it for crimes like this...

Errr, most of the world doesn't use it at all, and only one western nation...

How are you defining 'most of the world'? If you go by population you are certainly incorrect. I'm not even certain you'd be correct if you went by a count of nations. Its certainly common in the third world, and that accounts for most of the world's nations and population.

Originally posted by reflex-croft:The problem with capital punishment is that it flat out does not work. Much of the world uses it for crimes like this...

Errr, most of the world doesn't use it at all, and only one western nation...

How are you defining 'most of the world'? If you go by population you are certainly incorrect. I'm not even certain you'd be correct if you went by a count of nations. Its certainly common in the third world, and that accounts for most of the world's nations and population.

By number of countries capital punishment is definitely in the minority. The red countries practise it, so only about half the third world. I would say that most of the world didn't.

The punishment seems possibly sufficientbut ... only if the time is to be served at

Guantanamo Bay

We do need to find some use for the placeonce they move the terrorists out and I can'tthink of a finer group of invividuals toreplace them. Add the other financial megacriminals to the mix (Madoff et al) and itjust might restore my faith in the americanjustice system.

I would like to lock them in a room where they have to actually read each one of the billion or so emails they sent and then repeat them out loud. If it sends them mad, just maybe they might *finally* have some understanding of what their actions have done.

Originally posted by reflex-croft:The problem with capital punishment is that it flat out does not work. Much of the world uses it for crimes like this...

Errr, most of the world doesn't use it at all, and only one western nation...

How are you defining 'most of the world'? If you go by population you are certainly incorrect. I'm not even certain you'd be correct if you went by a count of nations. Its certainly common in the third world, and that accounts for most of the world's nations and population.

By number of countries capital punishment is definitely in the minority. The red countries practise it, so only about half the third world. I would say that most of the world didn't.

From your own Wikipedia link:

quote:

Currently, 95 countries had abolished capital punishment, 9 had done so for all offences except under special circumstances, and 35 had not used it for at least 10 years or were under a moratorium. The other 58 actively retained the death penalty.

Thats a total of 102 nations with it still on the books(the US also went decades with it not utilized, but on the books). 95 countries have abolished it. So no, its still in effect for most of the world. Further:

quote:

But more than 60% of the worldwide population live in countries where executions take place insofar as the four most populous countries in the world (the People's Republic of China, India, United States and Indonesia) apply the death penalty and are unlikely to abolish it at any time soon.

You also lose the population argument. Your map is misleading in that many of the nations with it abolished have large land masses with low population density. There are more than a billion Muslims, a billion Chinese and a billion Indians, taken together(even with overlap of Muslims in China and India) accounting for more than half the world's population between them.

BTW, whether or not most of the world uses capital punishment is not my justification for whether or not it is correct or moral or even effective. I made the argument above that it was not efective. I just find blanket statements like the one that was made to be very self-rightious and centered towards western society, inherantly implying other legal systems are somehow less valid for including an aspect you personally find distasteful. Cultural superiority and all.

Yeah, but it's not cultural superiority if a leftist feels snobby about his superiority visa-via another a non-minority culture. Then it's enlightment and reason

And no, I'm not right wing, but it's pretty noticeable at times. It's wrong to look down on a culture for being religiously intolerant...because that's a valid cultural difference. It's OK to sneer at people who attend church or own guns because that's just silly. makes my head spin...

Originally posted by TitusPullo:>Cause we all know murder is a serious deterrent to crime.

There are two types of deterrence, general and specific. Capital punishment might or might not be an effective general deterrent but it is 100% effective as a specific deterrent. Dead men don't re-offend.

Opposite side of the coin is that we don't know how many people are deterred because they don't commit the crimes. Most of the time the argument against deterrence is that "everybody" isn't deterred, which is pretty lame, imo.

If you believe that it is impossible to get evidence about deterrence, then you also don't know how many people are deterred by any other type punishment. Are your opinions about the effectiveness of particular sentences rational?

Originally posted by TitusPullo:>Cause we all know murder is a serious deterrent to crime.

There are two types of deterrence, general and specific. Capital punishment might or might not be an effective general deterrent but it is 100% effective as a specific deterrent. Dead men don't re-offend.

Opposite side of the coin is that we don't know how many people are deterred because they don't commit the crimes. Most of the time the argument against deterrence is that "everybody" isn't deterred, which is pretty lame, imo.

Oh, I wasn't trying to say that it isn't a general deterrent. I think it is but there are arguments on both sides. I was just stressing that there is no rational argument that it isn't a specific deterrent and in the abstract case of murder, that's enough for me. Standards of proof give me some pause because executing the wrong person is a positively horrific end result, but I digress.